Tell me if this sounds familiar. And I’ll say right up front that though this is a Colts’ site, the team I am about to describe is not the Indianapolis Colts.
There’s this NFL team that is pretty bad. As a result, it gets a very high draft pick and is able to select a blue-chip quarterback. In his rookie season, that QB showed a lot of promise. Still, he’s a rookie on a bad team. The team once again has a bad record. They end up firing their coach.
It just so happens that a defensive-minded veteran head coach is available. He, too, had been fired from his last head coaching gig but was still respected enough to score a new job.
Titans’ latest coaching move will make the AFC South very interesting for the Indianapolis Colts
Since he comes from the defensive side of the ball, he brings in an accomplished, experienced offensive coordinator … a man who has been a part of a whole lot of championships and worked with one of the best quarterbacks in the league. Who better to develop the team’s prized QB as he enters his second season?
The result? Well, that depends on which team you think I’m talking about.
If you think the QB I’m talking about is Drake Maye, the head man is Mike Vrabel, and the OC is Josh McDaniels, then it turned out with New England winning the AFC championship and going to the Super Bowl.
If you think it is the Tennessee Titans? Well, only the prologue has been written. We’ll have to wait for the first chapter to play out in the 2026 season. But if you’re the Colts – or the Jags or Texans, for that matter – there is reason to be just a bit alarmed.
The Titans hired Robert Saleh to be their new head coach last week. Saleh has had great success running the defenses in San Francisco on two separate occasions in the past decade. In between those gigs, he served as the head coach for the New York Jets.
Sure, he failed, but come on. It’s the Jets. The team has only made it to seven wins three times in the past eleven years, and Saleh was the coach in two of those seasons.
Saleh will have two excellent defensive tackles to build around, along with some decent young talent in the back seven. There is work to do on defense, but he will probably have them playing a lot better fairly soon.
Offense might be a bigger challenge. Saleh needed to find a quality offensive coordinator to help develop Cam Ward. By hiring Brian Daboll, he has done just that.
Like Josh McDaniels, Daboll was run out of his head coaching gig with the Giants. But no one doubts his acumen when it comes to running offenses and helping talented, inexperienced quarterbacks.
Daboll took over as Buffalo’s offensive coordinator in 2018. It was the same year the Bills were breaking in their new quarterback, Josh Allen. In his rookie year, Allen threw ten touchdown passes and 12 interceptions. He was sacked on over eight percent of his dropbacks.
Two years later, his touchdowns were up to 37, and his picks dropped to 10. His sack rate fell to below five percent. Three seasons working with Brian Daboll and Josh Allen were Second-Team All-Pro and runner-up for league MVP.
If he can work similar magic with Cam Ward, who’s to say that Saleh, Daboll, and Ward can’t be the Vrabel, McDaniels, and Maye of 2026? Like New England, Tennessee enters this offseason with strong draft capital and a boatload of salary cap space.
The Indianapolis Colts face a lot of questions this season. After their epic collapse in 2025, they chose to keep the coach and GM intact. It does not appear that Lou Anarumo and Jim Bob Cooter will be getting new posts, so it looks like all the major infrastructure will remain the same.
They will be competing against the ascendant division champion Jacksonville Jaguars, the Houston Texans, who have been to the playoffs three straight years, and Tennessee, who have been the cellar-dwellers in those same three years.
But Tennessee could be on the move. The one thing they were missing was a coach who could maximize Cam Ward’s talents. In Brian Daboll, they just found him.